e coli

So here’s a brilliant idea: If you want to keep fresh fruits and vegetables from becoming contaminated and making people sick, how about making sure that workers wash their hands, crops are irrigated with unpolluted water, processing equipment stays clean and animals are kept away from crops? Sounds simple, but it’s taken years for the government, consumers and the food industry to agree on how to enforce these things. Last week, two years to the day after Congress passed landmark …

So tiny, yet so deadly. That’s the verdict on raw sprouts – from the mung bean sprouts used in Chinese stir-fry dishes to the threadlike alfalfa or clover sprouts often added to sandwiches -which have caused dozens of food poisoning outbreaks in the past two decades. The government’s been trying for 14 years to get growers to do a better job of reducing contamination, but hasn’t been too successful. So finally, retailers are just deciding not to sell the teeny …

Holiday baking is in full force, but don’t be tempted to nibble on that raw cookie dough. Especially you, ladies. Two years ago, eating Nestle Toll House raw cookie dough sickened 77 people in 30 states, most of them women and adolescent girls. It was the first time packaged cookie dough had ever caused food poisoning. Now a lengthy investigation into that outbreak has found a likely — and surprising — culprit: The flour. After Nestle recalled 3.6 million packages …

Watch your step: The bathroom is quickly becoming one of the most dangerous rooms in your house. A recent CDC report looked at bathroom-related injuries in 1998. Every day that year about 640 people were treated in emergency departments for fractures and cuts related to falls. Highlights: Women were hurt more than men; the highest number of injuries were among adults older than age 65. The report is significant because it’s the first to not only measure the number of …

The devastating outbreak of E. coli poisoning in Germany – now traced to bean sprouts – is particularly frightening because the deadly new strain is extremely hard to treat. So far 31 have died and more than 700 are in intensive care, including three Americans who had recently visited Germany. The virulent new form of E. coli afflicts the kidneys, blood and central nervous system, resulting in a devastating, potentially life-threatening illness with a high probability of lifelong complications.